ORIGINAL POST ON 26 MAY 2011Decades ago, I read The Strange One by Fred Bodsworth. The story is set in Northeastern Ontario, between Timmins and Moosonee, and one of the characters is a barnacle goose.

This goose resembles a Canada goose, but it is native to Europe. In the story the barnacle goose is driven off its migratory route by storms and ends up at the bottom of James Bay. There it links up with a flock of Canada geese. In the flock, it is “the strange one”. In the story a Native girl from James Bay leaves her community to educate herself in “Canada”. When I taught in Moose Factory 50 years ago, the community joke was that anyone taking the train to Cochrane was “going to Canada”.In “Canada”, the girl finds herself regarded as “the strange one”.

Okay, this is not about the goose or the girl. This is a meditation on place – on its vital function in a story.

I was so enamoured of Bodsworth’s description of the natural home of the barnacle goose, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, that when I had an opportunity, I checked it out.

Yes, I went searching for the stretch of seashore described on the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides . . .

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E.J. Lavoie contributes a weekly column to Greenstone's Coffee Talk and the Nipigon-Red Rock Gazette. The column can be read in its entirety on his blog, complete with images. Just click the link at the end of each post.